Accor Hotels announces Orbis tender offer and confirms business targets

AccorHotels has announced its intention to launch a tender offer for the acquisition of Polish hotel group Orbis worth €442m (£391.9m). AccorHotels has filed with the Polish Financial Supervision Authority a notification concerning the intention to launch a tender offer together with a tender offer circular for the acquisition in cash for the 21,800,593 shares of Orbis it does not currently representing 47.31% of the share capital. Orbis, which is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, is the largest hotel operator in Central & Eastern Europe and the exclusive franchisee of certain AccorHotels brands in the region. Its portfolio comprises of 128 hotels (21,000 rooms) in 16 countries. Sebastien Bazin, chairman and CEO of AccorHotels said: “AccorHotels and Orbis have built a long-term partnership since their first business agreement 45 years ago. As its largest shareholder since 2000, AccorHotels has fully supported Orbis’ growth in Poland, then across Central Europe since 2014, where Orbis has become today a formidable leader. “The proposed transaction will enable AccorHotels to accelerate its development in the region. In addition, it will enable AccorHotels to further implement its active asset management policy.” Through the transaction, AccorHotels said it intends to “consolidate its leadership in Central Europe and improve optionality on Orbis’ asset portfolio management”, including replication of the active asset management strategy implemented by AccorHotels for several years. Upon the completion of the offer AccorHotels will hold shares in the share capital of the company constituting at least 90% of the share capital of Orbis, and added it intends to proceed with a "squeeze-out" of the minority shareholders of the company. Accor has also reaffirmed its target to double its EBITDA to €1.2bn (£1.06bn) by 2022. It said the move to achieving this target will continue to be driven by “the integration and ramp-up of recent acquisitions, - Solid revenue growth, reflecting both sound business levels in the group’s key markets and the continued increase in development, supported by the upscaling of its brand portfolio and operating margin improvement”. Commenting Bazin added: “AccorHotels has gone through a major transformation over the last few years. This was evidenced by numerous acquisitions of brands and new ancillary business activities, the strengthening of our digital platforms, and the shift to an asset-light model with the sale of a majority stake in AccorInvest. These major steps behind us, we are now focused on executing on our strategy to unleash the Group’s full potential.”